


taste your beating heart

by intybus



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Basically just Flint being emo over Silver, Blow Jobs, Drinking, Episode Tag, First Kiss, Hand Jobs, M/M, Poorly Repressed Feelings, Set after Silver resurrects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 06:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13518354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intybus/pseuds/intybus
Summary: Silver was dead and now he isn’t. It is a difficult thought to wrap one’s mind around.





	taste your beating heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the first time I try to write something in English, so I'm positive I have messed up many times along the way. If you spot anything out of place please point it out to me!!! 
> 
> This is set after 403 but there is a slight canon divergence (I added a night between 403 and 404 so they could get frisky, i guess.)
> 
> (Also, please know and forgive: I'm bad at endings.)

The war isn’t won yet, but they are closer than they've ever been. At the present state of things, they can even afford a night of rest. It does not come as a gift. Now that there aren’t pressing matters demanding his attention, keeping him busy (keeping him safe), Flint can’t stop thinking about it (him).

Silver was dead and now he isn’t. It is a difficult thought to wrap one’s mind around.

Flint learned how to deal with loss a long time ago, but this is not loss (even though it hurt like it, at first). What storms in his chest is the chaos of relief. He needs to figure out how to negotiate with it before it devours his brain as it devoured his heart.

He already feels his control starting to slip.

When he saw him again for the first time (a shipwreck, but alive), Flint had felt Silver’s blood pump in his own veins and he had felt Silver’s breath exploding in his own lungs. It had felt like Flint was the one spat out by the ocean and for the space of a blink, he was. For the space of a blink, he had no past and no future and no war to win. All that was left of him was the burning ache of need: a wild force, rebelling against any other instinct in his body, silencing any other thought. Trudging, blind and demanding, towards the next breath of air. (Pulling him toward John Silver, each step feeling more inevitable than death.)

Now, Silver sits in what was once Eleanor’s chair, behind what was once Eleanor’s desk. (Candlelight trembling over his skin.) He is unsuspecting. Talking and breathing and existing like he never stopped. He was dead and now he is back into the realm of material entities. (He could be touched so easily. Flint won’t touch him, of course. Even though he has wanted to do so since before his death and even more desperately he kept wanting it after.)

Out of the window, Nassau doesn’t give a shit that Captain James Flint is losing his mind.

“Sorry, am I boring you?” Silver asks, not dead and quite annoyed.

Flint has been ignoring him. He tried to do it subtly, nodding and grunting once in a while, but always with his head turned not quite towards him. (It was his only option, really. At not ignoring him, Flint could not have mustered any subtlety.)

The fact that not only Silver is alive, but that he is alive and alone with him is so unsettling, Flint can barely stand it. The awareness of it presses down on his flesh, crawls under his skin, makes his fingers twitch. He turns all the way toward the window, leaving Silver to stare at his back. “You are very wordy”.

“I am eloquent, Captain”.

“Is this a rally or a celebration?”

“Yeah, alright,” Silver grumbles. Flint watches his reflection pour rum into two cups. “Let’s celebrate, then”.

He shifts on his feet. At this very moment, it feels like there has never been anything in his whole, troubled life he has ever feared more than he is fearing getting drunk with John Silver. “I—“ he starts “I’ll pass on the rum”.

“You’ll pass on the rum.” Silver states. He is trying to catch Flint’s eyes on the window’s glass, but he is allowed no cooperation. So he fails. “Then how should this celebration go? Do you have anything particular in mind?”

(What he has in mind is this: crawling over Silver’s lap and pinning him to the chair. A hand on his beating heart, his lips on the pulse point on his throat, tongue pressing down on it. Silver’s hot breathe ghosting against his face. Their bodies moving and alive.)

He keeps his gaze out of the window, jaw tight. He doesn’t trust his voice much more than he trusts his eyes.

“Are you even here with me?” Silver says, frustrated by the silence. He takes a sip from his cup. “Do you really want me to drink alone?”

Flint thinks he could excuse himself, say he’s tired and wants to rest a bit while he can. He is tired, it would not entirely be a lie. Still, nothing comes out of his mouth. (In truth, this is torture, but leaving Silver out of his sight feels unbearable. When he can’t look at him, panic claws at his guts. Whatever Silver says, Flint can’t shape reality around his will. No one comes back from the dead.)

(He knows it is inconsistent, just a stupid fucking fear that won't untangle from his ribs.)

Silver sighs and in a couple of quick swigs he drains both his cup and the one he poured for Flint. Then he stands, bottle in hand, and starts limping toward the window. Flint looks away, breath short.

“Something,” Silver says as he leans against the wall next to where Flint is brooding, “is troubling you”.

At that, Flint shifts away just a bit. Without looking directly, he tries to glare at the pestering creature that won’t leave him alone either inside is mind nor outside of it. “You are very perceptive”.

“That I am,” Silver agrees, a smile curling on his lips. When he speaks again, his voice drops to something soft and hushed that tightens a knot inside Flint’s throat. “Won’t you tell me what is it?”

“It’s nothing,” he pushes out. Takes the bottle handed to him. (Fingers not brushing against Silver’s. He makes sure of it.) He drinks.

Silver brows are furrowed, under them his eyes are mapping Flint’s face with too much intent. Flint tries not to twitch. The attention is heady and familiar, it prickles against his skin like a physical touch. (It makes Silver feel more real, not just a trick of the mind, but a being with flesh and will.) It is also frightening, all this probing at his cracked façade. Silver’s death has opened a wound into him that had no time to heal. Flint can feel himself bleeding out of it still. He is sure: under the right light, he is a breath away from being bare.

(If anybody could ever understand him, that is John Silver. If anybody could ever use any understanding of him to make him weak (undone) that is John Silver.)

(Flint wants it almost as much as he fears it.)

As compromised as he is, not running away is a dangerous gamble. Nevertheless, he allows Silver's browsing as he looks for words his mouth won’t refuse to shape. “I’m happy you’re alive. I’m not sure I’ve told you yet”. It’s close enough to what he wants to say.

Silver keeps him pinned for a couple of seconds before he shakes his head and snatches the rum out of his hand. His throat stretches back as he gulps down the liquid. He grimaces after. “Don’t seem very happy”.

The bore of the bottle shines in the dim light, wet. Flint burns with the need to collect any piece of evidence of Silver he is presented with. He feels transparent when he reaches back for the bottle. His mouth lingering on it, looking for a flavor he can’t quite catch. Then the sweet rush of rum washes it all away, mercilessly. He presses his lips together.

“I thought you were—“ the sentence crumbles into itself. Flint hears his voice crack.

“I’m not,” Silver says, a comforting hand hovering over Flint’s shoulder. He doesn’t touch and Flint shrugs him away.

He can't look at him. “I can fucking see that,” he says.

Silver accepts his outburst with a silence that is impossible to read. Maybe he is offended, maybe he is concerned. (Maybe he is pitying him.) (It feels like there is a spyglass aimed directly into Flint’s chest, piercing inside, so everyone can peep through blood and bones to where his heart beats at a pace John Silver can control.)

“Are you sure you’re happy about it?” Silver nudges him as he speaks, trying to lighten the mood. “I am by no means an expert on the matter, but for what I remember of it, happiness doesn’t really look like this”.

Flint takes a breath. “Shut up,” he grumbles, nudging back.

“I see. You wanted all the glory for yourself”.

He doesn’t know which of them Silver is trying to protect, as he turns Flint’s capitulation into a joke. He allows it. It feels safe. “You caught me”.

“I did, didn’t I?” His tone is conspirational and Flint can’t stop himself from looking up.

Silver is close which is startling, even though he could feel the heat of him soaking through his side.

There are cuts and blood sown all over his face. A nick on his cheek, one on his bottom lip. Death’s calligraphy spelling on his flesh truths that make Flint shake. (Silver is mortal and perishable and temporary.) (Flint can’t protect him.) For so long war has been his only ally, now he feels it turning his back on him. He stopped craving chaos, but he can’t stop being a vehicle of it. A pattern is a pattern. Silver should be away from it all, but it is not allowed.

Flint drinks the last of the rum and moves away from the window to place the empty bottle on the desk, maybe to look around for another one. (It is a poorly masked retreat.)

“Captain?” The thud of the crutch, the one of a footstep; they sound like the drums before a battle. “Flint”.

(He is very tired. What if he lets himself fall apart? Will Silver step on his shards? Will he pick them up?)

Flint grips the edge of the desk, staring at his knuckles as they white. Silver is already next to him.

“James,” he says for the first time. His hand reaches for the side of Flint’s neck, fingers digging in, thumb on the chin steering it until Flint is looking at him. The pressure is grounding, he pushes back against it unwittingly. “I’m here,” Silver says. “If you want-- anything. You must know that”.

Flint can feel his heart speed up. Silver must feel it too, blood rushing under his fingertips. Flint lips part to carve an excuse into the silence, but the words dissolve into shallow breaths even before they can clash against the cage of his teeth.

Silver watches, he’s always watching.

The pressure on his neck becomes soft and Flint thinks it’s the prelude to a goodbye (he steadies himself for it), but Silver’s fingers stay on him, lingering lightly over his cheek, his jaw, his throat. It takes him all he has not to lean into them.

He lets Silver draw thoughtless routes on his face (a mouse letting a cat toy with him before the feast)—he doesn’t really have a choice, he thinks, until a thumb brushes against his lips. Flint grabs hard on Silver wrist. “Are you fucking drunk?”

Silver tugs himself free. His eyes are stony, they make something recoil inside Flint. This is the moment, he thinks. They are made, they are unmade. He has the power to choose.

He reaches out for Silver’s hand before he can think again. He brings it back to his face, breathing his relief into the broad palm, mouthing his apology against it.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asks hoarse, when Silver presses their foreheads together.

“Do you?” Silver says, inching his mouth closer to Flint’s warily, with intent, as he is daring him to run away again. Giving him plenty of time to be a coward, to be a sensible man.

Flint doesn’t understand how something that feels so urgent can unravels with such aching slowness.

When it happens everything shrinks down—reality resizing to fit itself into each point of contact they share. He cups Silver’s face in his hands, messy curls tangling in his fingers, beard tickling his palm. Lips soft, demanding—Flint tastes blood when he sucks on them reopening a fresh cut. (Silver is mortal and perishable and temporary.)

“What do you want? Please tell me,” he says kissing his way up to Silver’s jaw, biting down where he can feel he’s pulse thrum.

Silver swallows, the words he has not spoken gusting on the shell of Flint’s ear. His hand closes on Flint’s throat, pushing him back, enough to catch his eyes. It makes Flint’s head spin, it makes breathing harder, just barely. “You first,” Silver he demands, voice rough. It is both a power play and an admission of vulnerability.

Flint’s blood rushes to his cock.

He tilts his chin up so he bares more of his throat, so he can tower over him. “I want.” He says, feeling the heat in Silver’s eyes blazing through his own body, “I want to be close”.

“Yeah,” Silver says. Fingers scratching lightly as they fall to the hem of Flint’s shirt, yanking him closer. “Yeah, me too”.

Flint pushes him back, leaving messy kisses wherever he finds skin as he maneuvers their bodies blindly until Silver is trapped against the side of the desk. The crutch falls to the floor with a loud thud and Silver’s hand is on Flint’s bicep, his hip, is grasping his arse. Flint shoves a leg between Silver’s thighs and they grind together, groaning against each other.

Flint can’t revel in the friction for long. He feels the fabric of their clothing intruding and he needs more. Needs him closer. He slides his fingers down the front of Silver’s body, fumbling with his shirt until he can slide under it, touching skin. “John.” He feels the strong muscle responding at the touch, contracting. Flint slides his hand further down, stilling it snug against Silver’s crotch. “Can I?”

“Fuck,” Silver thrust his hips up. “Do you really have to ask”. And Flint starts working frantically on his belt, his trousers. The heat radiating from under them making him more feverish any second he is not touching. “Come on, come– oh” Silver chants, breathe stuttering when Flint finally manages to wrap his fingers around him.

The sight is breathtaking, but what makes Flint’s knees go weak and his cock twitch is the weight of it in his hand: solid and real. It’s been so long. He kisses Silver to stifle his own moan.

When he starts stroking him, Silver grabs his shoulder to steady himself. Flint doesn’t know where to look: his fist moving on Silver’s shaft, Silver’s face colored with pleasure he is taking from Flint. He closes his eyes and tries to feel each point in which his their bodies overlap.

Silver hips jerk forward.

“Don’t come,” Flint says, suddenly scared of letting this end. Scared to witness what will become of them, when they look back at this with their heads clear. “Please, don’t come yet”.

He stops stroking him to guide both of Silver’s hands back toward the desk before he sinks to his knees.

“Fuck,” Silver breathes looking down at him with hazed eyes.

Flint leaves eager, open-mouthed kisses along his shaft. Groans against it when he feels hectic fingers scratching his skull, looking for a grip. “I wish you had fucking hair”.

Silver voice is ruined, the sound of it spikes a hot wave of arousal inside Flint. He made it like this, Silver is letting him have this—him. The thought makes the blood roar louder in his ears. As he licks the tip of Silver’s cock before he takes it into his mouth, Flint is sharply aware of his own unattended erection pressing against the fabric of his trousers. He ignores it, hips chanting unwittingly at the same pace his mouth has found on Silver’s cock. He likes it like this, needs it like this. Just Silver’s smell, his taste, his weight, the rough sounds he is making. Just him, this wild and alive, without anything else interfering with Flint’s ability to take it all in.

Silver warns him when he is about to come, tries to pull out, but Flint doesn’t let him. He looks up, as he swallows around him daring Silver’s orgasm to break through. It does almost instantly, hot down Flint’s willing throat.

Flint presses his forehead on Silver’s hip, nuzzling against it as they both catch their breath. When Flint can move again, he starts fumbling with his own belt. Silver clutches at his shoulders tugging him up. “Come on, stand,” he says, “Stand”.

Flint does, somewhat clumsily, too aroused to give a damn. Silver (the little shit) laughs at him then redeems himself dragging him close by the hips and shoving a hand between his legs. His eyes are fixed on Flint’s mouth with such hunger Flint feels the bite of it. “I want to make you come,” Silver says.

“Come on then,” Flint grunts, grinding earnestly against the hand until it fucking moves away leaving him hanging like a fucking fool. Fuck. “You shit”.

Silver props himself over the desk so he can sit on it and uses his leg to hook Flint toward him as his fingers work on opening his trousers. He claims a kiss, while he fumbles, sucking on Flint swollen lip. Flint’s mouth still has his flavor in it, he must taste it too.

Flint tangles a hand in Silver’s hair and with the other, he props himself on the desk. He doesn’t really trust his knees as he finally fucks Silver’s fist. He is too worked up for this to last more than a couple of hard thrusts. As he shivers through his orgasm, he hides his face in the crook of Silver’s neck.

“Fuck. I love—“ Silver says, “I love this. Having you like this”.

“Yeah?” Flit ask groggily, not really taking in the meaning of the words.

As they stay close, Flint wills his breaths to slow, tries to time them to the rises and falls of Silver’s ribs.

Silver does feel real. He does feel alive.


End file.
